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2253 Finnish word-forms for "shop" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Wilma Triglot Newbie Zimbabwe Joined 6160 days ago 16 posts - 18 votes Speaks: Finnish*, Swedish, English Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 12 20 April 2009 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Here is something I found from the Internet for anyone who is intrested in Finnish language:
As you know, Finnish is heavy with suffixes such as cases, numbers (singular/plural), possessive suffixes and other clitics. This means that nouns and verbs also have many possible word-forms. Here is a list of possible word-forms of one Finnish noun "kauppa" (= a shop). I can assure you that on this list is only a handful of words that sound slightly unnatural for a native Finnish speaker. 2253 Finnish word-forms for "shop" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jar-ptitsa Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5897 days ago 980 posts - 1006 votes  Speaks: French*, Dutch, German | Message 2 of 12 20 April 2009 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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wow!!! It's incredible.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 3 of 12 20 April 2009 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I always think that sort of thing is extremely unhelpful, making the language seem overly complex. It's really not that different from English, apart from the lack of spaces. I could just as easily make a list as follows, but would it be helpful to someone who wanted to learn English?
shop a shop the shop my shop his shop at his shop in her shop to their shop under your shops etc. Edited by Cainntear on 20 April 2009 at 9:04pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6820 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 4 of 12 20 April 2009 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I second Cainntear
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| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6371 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 12 21 April 2009 at 3:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I third Cainntear. Not impressive.
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| vaasha Tetraglot Newbie Czech Republic lelaon.com Joined 5785 days ago 13 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Czech*, English, Norwegian, Finnish Studies: Welsh | Message 6 of 12 20 June 2009 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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And of course only a small portion of these forms is used. Forexample the -ko ending meaning it's a question you almost never use with shop. Kauppasiko? = Your shop? Even if you have something like this in mind you use whole sentence. Onko tämä kauppasi? or Tämäkö kauppasi? = Is this your shop?
Even more impresive would be how many forms can be derived from one Finnish verb because except hundreds of verb form there are some participles which can be derived the same way as kauppa in example above. This way you can have more then 10000 forms. 9900 most Finns do not use for whole their life. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6893 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 12 20 June 2009 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hello vaasha. You are absolutely right that many many of the forms would never be used in practice. But "kauppasiko", though slightly unusual, would be quite possible in a construction like "Sinun kauppasiko tämä onkin?", along with the other alternatives that you give, depending on what kind of emphasis you want in the sentence "Oh, this is in fact YOUR shop, is it?"
Nitpicking, but you are missing an "on" here: "Tämäkö on kauppasi".
Yes, we can probably put together as many verb forms in Finnish as there are sentences in other languages. Or very nearly. But this is just a side effect of how you go about forming words in the language. It can't be taken as proof of added difficulty or complexity as such. Different elements are just baked together into one word, where another language would use a grammatical construction with several words to express the same meaning. Edited by Hencke on 20 June 2009 at 8:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5724 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian | Message 8 of 12 21 June 2009 at 5:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is fairly typical of agglutinating/inflecting languages like Finnish. Similar lists could be made for Turkic languages like Kazakh, Tatar, etc.
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